Windows 2000 Control Panel

Windows 2000 Professional Control Panel

Holds mini application (applet) programs for changing the system environment. Most changes are saved in the system registry. Applets include:

Accessibility - Five tabs are keyboard, sound (Can have visible sound indications), display, mouse(Can move the mouse with the keyboard), and general (alternatives to keyboard and mouse).

Add/Remove Hardware - Can add and remove hardware device drivers for display devices, CDROM and DVD drives, I/O devices (Keyboard, mouse, USB devices and more), Mobile computer hardware, modems, multimedia, and network cards. A device driver is a software3 program that allows the system to interact with hardware. If the driver is signed, it has a digital signature from its creator verifying its authenticity.

Add/Remove Programs - Allows programs to be installed or removed from the system including optional Windows 2000 components. Vendor programs must be written to use this applet.

Administrative Tools - Only the members of the Administrators group can use these tools.

Display - Tabs are Background, Screen Saver, Appearance, Web, Effects, and Settings( Sets the video mode). The Screen saver allows power settings to be adjusted along with selection of the screen saver. Appearance tab adjusts the Windows color schemes. The Web tab allows a specific web page to be displayed all the time on the desktop. The effects tab allows desktop icons to be changed. The Settings tab allows screen size and colors to be changed.

Fax - Is used to configure Fax information and access theFax Service Management Console which allows a Fax to be setup to receive or send faxes. It is also accessed using "Start", "Programs", "Accessories", "Communications", and "Fax".

Folder Options - Allows the way files and folders are displayed to be modified. It includes the tabs "General", "View", "File Types", and "Offline Files". The View tab allows settings to specify whether the whole path is displayed, and whether hidden files are shown. The File Types tab specifies the application to be used to open files with extensions of specific types. The Offline Files tab allows setting of whether offline files are displayed and worked on. Once changed these files may be placed back into the online source. The default setting is on for Windows Professional and off for Windows Servers.

Fonts - Allows viewing of current fonts and installation of new fonts. It is a shortcut to the fonts folder.

Game Controllers- Allows configuration of joysticks and gamepads.

Internet Options - These are options for Internet Explorer. They can be accessed from the Tools menu of IE. Tabs include General (Control of temporary files, history, and home page), Security (Allows trusted site settings, cookie settings, JavaScript settings and more), Content (Allows certificates, and storage of private information), Connections, Programs (Specification of programs for e-mail, HTML editing, newsgroups, and more), and Advanced tabs(JavaScript debugging options, HTML versions and more).

Mouse and mouse pointer settings including mouse speed - Tabs include, Buttons (to set right or leeft handed mouse), Motion (speed), Pointers (Selection of mouse icons for normal, waiting, and other states), and Hardware (Sets up the mouse type such as PS2 Intellimouse and options available in the Device Manager).

Network and Dial-up Connection - Can change computer name, and set to workgroup or domain. bindings are set here with the first one on the list to be the first one tried when services are attempted to be used. Also used to install NIC drivers. Tabs are:

Identification - computer name and domain or workgroup name

Services - Can add, or remove services and check their properties.

protocols - Can add or remove protocols or check their setup (properties).

Adapters - Add or remove NIC adapter drivers.

bindings - Where the binding priority may be set for various services.

Power Options - Settings for how long hard drives and the monitor stays on are configured here. Tabs are "Power Schema", "Advanced", "Hibernate", "APM", and "UPS". The Power Schema tab controls how long of a period of inactivity to wait before turning off the monitor and hard drives. The Advanced Power Management (APM) tab controls older power management for laptops. The UPS tab is used to configure commands to execute when a UPS event occurs.

Regional Options - Set up regional and language settings for NT. Select General, Numbers, Currency, Time, Date, or Input Locales tabs. The Regional Options tab is used to add additional language support.

Scanners and Cameras - Digital cameras and scanners may be installed and configured here.

Scheduled Tasks - Also called the "Task Scheduler", it is used to schedule programs or scripts to run at specific times. An "Add Scheduled Task" icon is in this folder.

Sounds and Multimedia - Used to setup sound schemes and sounds to play for specific events. Tabs are "Sounds", "Audio", and "Hardware". The Sounds tab is used to associate events and sounds. The Audio tab allows the device to use for playing and recording sound to be set. The Hardware tab is used to configure and view multimedia devices.

System

General - Describes the name and version of the system, who it is registered to and the hardware it is running on.

Network Identification - Allows the changing of the computer name, workgroup, or domain.

Hardware - Allows selection of hardware profiles and what to do if the system cannot determine which profile to use. Includes Hardware Wizard, Device Manager, and Hardware Profiles sections. The Hardware Profiles section allows additional hardware profiles to be created. The Device Manager section includes a Device Manager and a Driver Signing button. The Device signing allows configuration of what to do when system files are not digitally signed. Options are Ignore, Warn, or Block. Sigverif command line utility is used to find unsigned files on the computer. Sfc.exe command line utility is used to replace any unsigned files with the original Microsoft version from the SystemRoot\System32\Dllcache directory. The device manager includes the ability to configure:

Computer - Used to configure for multiple processors.

Disk drives

Display adapters

DVD/CD-ROM drives

Floppy disk controllers

Floppy disk drives

IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers

Imaging devices

Infared devices

Keyboards

Mice and other pointing devices

Modems

Monitors

Network adapters

PCMCIA adapters - (Card Services)

Ports (COM & LPT)

Sound, video and game controllers

System devices

Universal Serial Bus controllers

User Profiles - Allows user profiles to be added and changed which will affect desktop settings. Roaming profiles may be set using this tab.

Advanced - Used to set:

Environment variables - Used to set environment variables. If the path is modified to include applications run on Win95, these applications can be run when using a dual boot system or migrating from Windows 95.

Performance options- Allows performance to be optimized for applications or background services (all programs with equal priority). Also allows configuration of page files.

Startup and shutdown options - Allows default selection of system to boot and amount of delay before timeout. Allows selection of what to do when a stop error occurs. More than one choice may be selected.

Users - Shows users logged onto the domain and where they are logged on from. (NT Server ONLY)

Shares - Shows resource name and path along with connected users.

In Use - Shows resources being used and the associated permissions.

Replication - Allows setup of directory replication.

Alerts - Controls where administrative alerts are sent

Services - Can start or stop services or set them to automatically start when the system is booted. Description entries include:

Service - The name of the service.

Status - Whether the service is running.

Startup - Manual or automatic.

buttons include:

Start

Stop

pause

Continue - Restart a service that is paused.

Startup - Set the service to be started by selecting one ot the radio buttons automatic, manual or disabled. Can also select one of two radio buttons called "System Account" or "This Account".

HW profiles - Allows selection of the hardware profile the service is being configured for.

There is also a "Startup parameters" text box used to configure special startup parameters for the service.

Sounds- Alignment of sound (.wav) files to system events.

Tape Devices - This is where tape device drivers are added to allow the system to perform backups. They can be added using the detect button or using the drivers tab.

Telephony - Used to configure part of RAS. The TApI (telephony application programming interface) and unimodem service provider are automaticllly installed. Unimodem works for modems on com ports and TApI is used for telephony applications.

UpS - Configure the UpS. UpS command configuration is configured here so the systems may receive information from the UpS unit. Commands can be programmed here to execute when a UpS event occurs.

Windows 2000 Server Control Panel

This section only describes control panel applets and features not described for Windows 2000 Professional.